


Whenever this world is cruel to me

by Mekachu04



Series: Nanowrimo 2019 [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Abandonment, Azirapahle's Halo comes out when he's feeling better, Aziraphale Whump (Good Omens), Black Plague, Broken Bones, Caves, Crowley Saves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Whump, Crying, Cuddling, Darkness, Demon Summoning, Demon Traps, Gen, Hell on Earth, Huddling For Warmth, Hugging, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Isolation, Missing Persons, No beta we fall like Crowley, Pre-Series, Snake!Crowley - Freeform, Summoning Circles, Too much paperwork, Trapped, Wing Injury, hurt!Aziraphale, possible cave related sensory deprivation, sleeping pile, true form injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mekachu04/pseuds/Mekachu04
Summary: We know Crowley did not care at all for the 14th century. There where a few reasons why, but the big one being that his angel was misplaced for most of it, and nobody seemed to even notice.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Nanowrimo 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572688
Comments: 14
Kudos: 172
Collections: Hurt Aziraphale





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Queen's song "you're my best friend "
> 
> this is one of the short stories i wrote for nanowrimo this year; which i used the whumptober list as prompts (Muffled Scream & Trembling)

If there is one good thing about Head Office - they're quick about punishment, and fairly straightforward about it. Be it reprimands, or execution, Heaven and Hell lack the creativity needed to make it hurt.

Humans don't have that hang up. 

When miracles, holy or demonic, were more casually used, representatives from both sides learned very quickly that humans didn't care much for the preternatural. Oh they prayed, and they cowered, but worshipers on both sides also coveted. They'd bent the knee all the while planning ways they could use the powers that-be better. How to harness said power for themselves, and not be bound by the whims of their celestial guests.

Angels managed to keep their noses clean longer only because of their self-righteous holier-than-thou opinions. Demon's shot themselves in the foot early on, when an upstart thought they could get themselves a promotion if their boss suddenly just went missing. So they taught humans how to summon other demons - planning on said summoning to happen right before their superior was supposed to have a meeting with _their_ boss. And for this one demon, it worked brilliantly, but it also started a few centuries of turn-about being fair play as humans turned demons into their own personal playthings.

And, enraged at having been summoned and trapped, most demon's traded the names of less liked demons for freedom. Or more powerful demons for freedom with a side of spite. Soon there were _lists_ of demonic names being traded back and forth between humans, leading one angel to begin what would be a lifelong hoarding of human written word as he tried to hunt down every copy. Even if the only ones he bothered to destroy where the ones that had a specific serpent listed on it - he'd initially hoarded those too, but a cheeky human had managed to **rob him** while he was back home giving a report to Gabriel. It had taken him months to track the stolen lists down, clay tablets moving much faster than one would have expected. (there had been writing for much longer than tablets, on furs and such, but Aziraphale hadn't given them much mind yet. Sure, he'd become enraptured by oral tradition, and would often linger to listen to the storytellers. But Angels were not meant to **own** things, so written words where useless to him. But he'd made an inquiry to a 'pagan' priest he was supposed to be bringing back into God's Grace, about one of the tablets he was copying, and the man had read off each name once he was done copying it. Many were pronounced horribly, but Aziraphale could decide if that was because of the limitations of this written media, or if the priest had done it intentionally as to not accidentally summon one of his 'gods.' The first time he'd seen his hereditary enemy's carved out into the clay, his first thought as 'what a pretty design'

Ironically the priests tablets were also the first thing Aziraphale had ever 'liberated' from a human. For their own safety you see.)

Angelic names were harder to come by, but, and as such as both sides will argue otherwise, angels and demons _are_ from the same stock, and while it may be harder to summon an angel, demonic traps work for them in exactly the way the work for their demonic counterparts. Although one'll likely have to listen to the angel bitch about how garish the trap looks, and did it really have to drawn in blood? (It does not. Even for demons. One particular snake-ish demon had only told humans that in an attempt to get them to **slow down** on the summoning and trappings, thinking humans might back off their search for power if it involved the suffering of other humans. It did not help matters for any party involved) And since very few true angelic names where known, at first, trapped angels could not be forced to help, although some of the more naïve ones could be tricked into it.

Deals with demons have consequences if the demon doesn't hold up their end. Deals with humans have no such backlash. Sure, humans breaking a deal with an angel means a permanent bar from heaven, but very few humans willing to trap an angel where going to getting in to begin with. So in the early days, angels who didn't know better, unwittingly gave humans the tools to hurt them back, and things spiraled out of control very quickly.

Humans killed an archangel. Heaven ended up wiping several human cities off the map. Hell didn't even try to intervene. Humans lost all the true names of the host, and Heaven was so shaken up by it that they _all_ took aliases when visiting Earth, and field agents were not allowed to, at any time, use any names but these new aliases. Sandalphon got a promotion.

Most demonic names where lost too, as well as some of the means to trap preternatural beings. But humans where gossips, and the designed were moved about the human world, sometimes completely unknowingly to all involved.

Summoning demons would fall in and out of favor though-out humanity, and Hell learned to roll with the punches.

Heaven really didn't have as much experience.

Which is how the Principality of the Eastern Gate ended up missing for the better part of the 14th century with absolutely no one realizing it. While it wasn't an end of the world event, the 14th century had three of the four horsepeople all in the same general part of the world at the same time, while it also coincided with many of Hell's Higher Up's Vacation requests. Heaven was completely blind sided by the overlap - which ironically was not done intentionally, but really was just a paperwork cock up where no one bothered to check if the vacations were overlapping with each other. It had left Hell in a lurch because suddenly there was **no one** in charge, each and every demon refusing to change their vacation, citing they already had an approval stamp on theirs and it was someone else's problem now. Heaven was also flooded with help requests from their own agents in trying to combat Death, Famine and Plague, **and** being overrun with Hell's vacationing princes and dukes all at the same time. Their paperwork was so backlogged, no one noticed when multiple agents didn't check in for their regular briefings. (Angels were still sorting these files out up to the End of the World; half of them secretly hoped heaven would lose just so they didn't have to look at anymore forms. The world **not** ending actually generated less work for them than if heaven won, so they all grumbled about the End that Wasn't when outside the office, but ultimately, it was just another day - and that was okay with them)

Heaven wouldn't notice Aziraphale had gone MIA in the 14th century until about three weeks after Nope'geddeon. The Principality was to check in on the century and half century, but missed his 1350 check in. Up until 3 weeks After, it was assumed the paperwork to that meeting was lost in the shuffle. The angel Iadnal was the one to realize that the Principality Aziraphale also performed no miracles from 1318 until 1373, which was a big deal since that Particular Field agent consistently had the **largest** file of miracles per decade than all the other field agents combined, along with the largest number of inquiries for justification behind said miracles. He was so bad about it that they actually ignored more of his lower scale miracles after the Flood and only reported the larger ones for questioning, just to save themselves some time. Heeoa had been called in for several audits to the field agent, and had come back so exasperated by the whole ordeal they needed a few weeks off before returning to work.

So, three weeks after Aziraphale was no longer employed by the Host, Iadnal sat in a quiet cubicle in Heaven, wondering if this needed to be reported too, or if they should just wash their hands of the whole file and leave it be. Who would they report this to at this point? Gabriel and Michael wouldn't hear the blundering angel's name in their presence. Maybe Iadnal should just sit on it for a few decades, wait for the whole Not End to not be such a touchy subject. But the bane of their department's existence had gone quiet for more than 50 years. Why? Aziraphale couldn't go a single earth day without at least 10 miracle reports popping up on Iadnal's desk for approval. Even under heavy reprimand, Aziraphale had never managed to get that number to zero for a single day.

55 years. During one of the few times when Heaven had given angels a free pass to try and get things under control.

Heeoa was their friend in audits - maybe they'd pulled Aziraphale's files from that century already. 

"Principality Aziraphale? I'm not sure," They'd pondered over it as the two angels took a break watching a sunrise over Australia, "Michael requested his complete file last month, and then after," they made a non committal gesture. "Well, everything is confidential now. I know your office just finished the Black Death filing, did he do something?"

"That's just the thing," Iadnal explained, "I can't find any of his paper work for it. And no one else in the department seems to remember seeing it. And I have complaining about him enough, you **know** how prolific he was on miracle uses."

Heeoa laughs at that, the sound of starlight passing through the leaves in spring, "I think in the last five centuries there wasn't a single decade we didn't file complaints. In fact, he was our go-to for interoffice disciplinary actions. 'Be late to work again, and we'll make you audit Aziraphale this quarter.'


	2. Chapter 2

While Heaven might not have noticed a single angel's absence until Iadnal's discovery of a lack of paperwork more than 600 years later; a single _demon_ had noticed said angel seemed suspiciously absent in the years leading up to what would later called the Black Death. He, too, at the time, hadn't given it much notice for the first few decades, as Hell had literally poured out onto Europe, and he was juggling keeping up appearances and staying the fuck out of everyone's way. When Dagon shown up in Scotland in 1310, Crowley said bye to his angel friend and spent the next two decades in Latin America with the Maya. He'd made his way back across the Atlantic in time to hear that Pestilence was about to start their walking tour in Kyrgyzstan, and while he'd attempted to look for where Aziraphale might have been working, it was the first time in their long history that he would make an effort to find the ethereal being and would fail completely.

He'd liked to have worried about that at the time, but Hell's royalty were still mingling on Earth, and were rallying to support whatever devastation Pestilence was up too. Heaven, naturally, was gearing up to thwart them, and Europe and West Asia were about to become a chess board between the two forces. Crowley got his marching orders, and tried his best to keep his head down, with various degrees of success.

He first started to actually worry about his friend when the plague hit England in 1346, and there was not a trace of Aziraphale. Aziraphale had a soft spot for the area; he'd been charged with blessing an early Roman venture to the island and had found the Celtic Brits to be charming, and had weaseled his way into many ventures back to the land as often as possible. While the people changed, the area still seemed to draw the angel to it, so much so that by the time he was accompanying King Arthur he was officially the Principality of England. 

So, for the principality to be missing during such an event had Crowley worried. With the state of Europe, maybe he had been restationed for the time being. But then the plague ravished London again in 1361, and Crowley still could not sense Aziraphale anywhere on the mortal plane, and thought maybe he'd been recalled, or worse - discorporated. During round three, in 1369, he'd tricked a minor field angel into confessing that none of the principalities had fallen, confirming indirectly that Aziraphale was not in heaven either.

So where the blazes was he?

Hell had mostly packed it up and gone back below at that point, and Heaven had flaked off to leave the Humans to try and clean things up on their own. Crowley wanted nothing more than to curl up in a hole for a decade or so and sleep the rest of this awful century away. But he hadn't seen his best friend in nearly sixty years, and was looking at the fact that the angel had vanished with no one noticing somewhere in that time. It wasn't uncommon for them to go a few decades without running into the other, but Crowley had never _not_ known where the angel was. He was a principality; he always shown a little brighter than the other field angels on purpose. It was his very nature to be noticed, to be an unconscious beacon for the downtrodden. Made him seemingly an easy demonic target too, if a demon didn't mind going blind trying to attack him, seeing as Aziraphale kept himself on the dimmest setting possible when going about his daily duties, and that was still enough to give Crowley a headache in those early days.

\---

He'd heard rumors of a cursed place. 

Now, following the Plague, _many_ places were looked at as cursed. But what locals survived swore to him that the town was cursed years before people got sick. And the curse was weird - no one died, but people complained of headaches, and that food and wine tasted like ash. Crops grew, but never blossomed. Fields and fields of immature grain that never reached fruition. Sheep wool never grew out after the last shearing, and chickens never grew fat, and heifers stopped producing milk as soon as the calves were separated. Dogs and field cats fled at first opportunity and never returned. Deer and rabbits, even the song-birds, had vanished from the woods. Humans had left before the sickness had ever came.

Ironically, some had braved the curse during plague, not knowing where else to go. As long as they didn't mind the extreme shortage of food, anyone who sought refuge there survived the epidemic. Although many got sick and died after they left, most still said they'd take their chances with Death than stay there any longer than necessary.

The place reeked of Heaven, but only in the way spoiled milk resembled the fresh drink. It was how, in Crowley's opinion, heaven _should_ smell, if Heaven was honest about how it was just as messed up as Hell was. (If Heaven was milk, Hell was rotten meat. It was vaguely related to milk, but it's own whole separate thing, and Hell was always up front with what a shit show it was). Most of the buildings had been wood, fallen and rotting away after years of disuse, but there was a stone structure in the center with a stone wall around it. A small, pathetic, strong-hold that likely only kept people's minds at ease than provide any true sanctuary to the town’s once-residences. It looks like a single family once resided there regularly, a small level lord of some kind. It’s also where the smell was the worse, the air putrid and almost palatable to a demon. Even if it had gone off, it was still holy, and Crowley could see why humans felt sick near it, even if they couldn't smell it. Maybe they could, but didn't have a point of reference for the smell. Might be why everything tasted dead to them.

The air burned, making his mouth numb, and the part of him that usually never stopped asking questions had gone deathly silent. Walking into the building made his knees feel like jelly, and bones and joints that already struggled to hold him upright threatened to mutiny outright.

Only the first room was unlocked; humans had not liked to come back into this place, and Crowley was very much in agreement on this place being cursed. It had been fifty years since anyone had been past that entryway, and even the stones told Crowley to _Go Away_.

Once he opened what might have been a sitting room, he understood why. Someone had marked up the room, an intricate weaving across wall, floor and ceiling of a demon trap of the caliber Crowley had never seen for himself. Crowley had talked his way out of many traps over his time, but most of them were simple ones, meant for ... Well field agents like him. It took a lot of power to draw something that could hold higher ranked demons, and most humans were smart enough to know that it was rarely worth the effort, because they'd also need an even significant more power to summon one. 

This must have been drawn up when Hell's upper class have been on vacation. Some human must have caught on, and realized they didn't need to summon a powerful demon, they just needed to trick one that was already on Earth.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, what they'd tricked into the trap was not a demon at all, and the bindings were a bit too overpowered for the celestial entity inside. Crowley hoped that something horrible had happened to the humans, because the alternative was they'd willingly left Aziraphale behind, alone, and in _agony_.

"Angel?" Crowley couldn't get any closer yet, or risk getting trapped himself. Aziraphale had not reacted to him at all, just a lump of bone and feather in the center of the room. Even outside the binding, Crowley could feel the weight of the trap trying to force him to shaking knees. He had to leave the building entirely to shake off the yoke of the weavings, hands shaking at his side as he regarded the building. He'd have to break the circles, but he was going to have to do it without being close enough to see what he was doing, and hopefully without bringing the stone structure down on itself.

Although at this point, discorporation might be a welcome mercy. Crowley just didn't know how deep the damage went, and worried that the binding may have latched into Aziraphale's celestial core - and breaking the circles might do enough damage that he might not survive a discorporation.

He almost discorporated himself in panic when he did break the seal; because Aziraphale _**screamed**_.

It wasn't just vocal, but atomic, the cry caused his ears to bleed, he cried blood, and felt it pouring from his nose. His chest ached like he’d been kicked by a horse, and every joint in his body liquefied and he crumbled to the dirt as his muscles seized over battered bones.

 _He_ felt like death would be a mercy, and came back to himself staring up at a brilliant night sky dotted with stars.

Pulling himself to his feet was like pulling teeth, and, shamefaced, he _crawled_ into the stone building when his legs refused to support him.

Aziraphale hadn't moved from the spot Crowley had seen him last, but the energy of the room was gone, and Crowley could smell the angel again. He collapsed on the floor next to his friend, and just lay starting at the quiet, still face next to him. Aziraphale's eyes were open, but dull, life sucked out of the blue seas that had held Crowley's attention for so many centuries. Angels do not need to breathe, and it was probably a good thing, because this one's chest was crushed under the long steady pressure of the trap. His wings were still out, mangled and broken down, like someone had tried to stomp them flat. 

Aziraphale was, in Crowley's option, the definition of soft, cuddly and round. Right now he was none of these things, harsh starved edges, smashed nearly flat after decades of pressure. _Pressure makes diamonds_ , he mind tried to help, and Crowley pushed himself up onto shaky arms, inspecting the angel's true form for damage.

Where to begin?

If Crowley honestly believed Heaven would help, he'd have called the Host down in a second to cart Aziraphale away, knowing that he'd be both unlikely to ever see the angel again, or even to survive the encounter in the first place. But he'd been at odds with some of the things Aziraphale had unknowing revealed about how Heaven was managed post-Fall, and he didn't trust them to have the delicacy needed for something like this. Because it wasn't just Aziraphale body - corporal or ethereal - that was damaged, but Aziraphale's very light. The spark of God's Grace that burned inside every angel that was just a little different than all the others depending on God's Purpose. Aziraphale's burned like clove and wistfulness. Once it was gone, that was the end of an angel. They dissipated back into the ether. Even the fallen still burned, but with dark void of fury where God's Grace had been ripped out.

The warmth that made Aziraphale anything more than stardust flickered, a flame that only still burned because it had been forced to consume its own ethereal core self. 

Demonic miracles could fix Aziraphale's corporation with nothing more difficult than some fancy paper work, and Crowley wasted no time in righting, or even recreating, bones and muscles. Bodies were easy.

Celestial cores took a more personal touch. But again, Crowley had Heaven beat, because he knew what Aziraphale really looked like, not the shadow that Heaven tried to enforce. It did take a lot more effort on Crowley's part than it would have taken an angel, and Crowley felt time slipping away from him again as he fought off an increasingly desperate calling to rest as he poured himself into stabilizing his friend.

He would never accept thanks for such a gesture, but became increasingly worried when one was not offered; the blank gaze of Aziraphale continuing on unchanging.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley was desperately trying to flame the spark that made up Aziraphale, trying to breath life back into his friend, but the once vibrant sheen remained stubbornly dull. He could feel his own reserves depleting, and struggled not to let tired, frustrated tears fall.

"Come on Angel," he muttered, gathering his strength to pull Aziraphale up into his arms, standing clear of the rubble. He wasn't going to be able to stand much longer, and even if this place was cursed, something was bound to notice the recent outpouring of power, and Crowley wanted them far from this place when it happened. He had enough for a couple short jumps through space, miracling them across country lines before his corporation threatened to give out, the final jump pulling them deep with a damp cold cave somewhere along the shorelines of France. 

He'd barely rematerialized them when his feet gave out, and he had to give up moving them any deeper, awkwardly slithering around his broken angel protectively. The cold would do neither of them any favors, but that was something for future Crowley to think about. He could hear water moving around in the darkness, absurdity loud against the rock walls to the point if he couldn't tell if it was crashing waves or if that was just his imagination straining for input in the pitch dark. They should be tucked away far enough back to keep any humans from accidentally finding them. Hopefully the water would help dissipate any lingering magic.

Crowley slept.

\---

The passage of time was harder to figure out when he awoke, but it was at least to better results. Aziraphale had curled into him sometime while they slumbered, gleaming faintly in the piceous dim of the cave. While they'd rested, bones and muscle had finished knitting themselves back where they belonged, even if the angel was a little more on the slender side than Crowley would of liked. He looked exhausted too, something that Crowley had never seen on the angelic face, as he snuggled deeper into Crowley's coils when the snake demon made an aborted effort to stretch out.

"Angel?" he hissed into the dark, hopes falling when Aziraphale did not wake, just remained shivering where he was tucked against him.

Still, it was a sign that someone was home. Crowley stayed serpentine, tightening up more python-like until only the glint of Aziraphale's pale hair was still visible, painfully cautious of wings and arms as he trapped what heat the angel was giving off and letting him slumber on. He'd never known an angel - or demon - to _need_ to sleep, but he could see Aziraphale's self burning much more confidently now, even if it was a small flicker of his usual Light.

He did not fall back asleep this time, just held tight and waited.

If he focuses, he could see the barest hint of the sun's passage bouncing off far away walls bending around in the distance, but it didn't seem to glow with any consistency, likely being filtered by clouds and ocean spray, so Crowley didn't bother trying to keep track.

\---

"Azzzzziraphale?" he hisses, cold and tired, trying to tell if the angel's shifting was real or just more of his wishful thinking.

No, it was definitely real, he could feel the twitch of wings against him. He uncoiled quickly, less Aziraphale think he was trapped still as he came back to himself. The angel bemoaned to loss of heat, and Crowley chuckled as indignant weak hands tried to tug him back into place, "Wake up angel," he cooed, bemused for the first time in years.

"Crowley?" came a tired question, and Crowley had never been so happy to hear his name fall from any one's lips. He lifted the coils the angel had been cushioned on to help Aziraphale into a sitting position, and the two both groaned as stiff muscles protested the move. "Crowley, I don't... I can't... Where are we?"

"France, I think. Not completely sure."

He could see Aziraphale straining to see in the dim lighting of the cave. His angelic sight was measurably better than humans, but there was no sun bouncing off the entrance to the elbow Crowley had hidden them away in. Crowley felt well enough to change back into something with a bit more limbs - and more importantly eyelids and filtered glasses - and patted Aziraphale on the knee once he was ready, "Alright angel, light us up."

Even knowing it was coming, Crowley still was almost blinded as the words fell from cold angelic lips, "Let there be light."

They both looked rather worse from wear, Crowley had yet to miracle his clothes back into rights from digging Aziraphale out of the rubble, and the angel's clothes were unsalvageable tatters by this point. The skin had taken on a sallow blue hue from the wet cold, and Aziraphale's hair looked like all the color had leached out, leaving wet clumps of blanch and dreary clinging to his head. Crowley couldn't help but frowning, reaching out to try and smooth it out to resemble hair again. He didn't dare to ponder what mess his own was in.

But, glory upon the highest, Aziraphale's stygian-blue eyes shone back alert and fond, even if they were still tainted with confusion, and it was the best thing Crowley thinks he's ever seen. His hands still rest on either side of that angelic face. He can feel tears welling, and he pointedly does not blink less he encouraged them to fall down upon his cheeks where Aziraphale could see them. "How do you feel?"

"Cold?" Aziraphale questions, and Crowley can see him taking stock of himself, "Hungry?"

Crowley can't help but bark out a laugh, pulling the angel close into one of their rare embraces. Confused arms circle around him in turn, but Aziraphale doesn't voice any other thoughts has Crowley starts to cry into his shoulder. He's happy, the tears at this point are mostly just fear and dread leaving his system now that they are no longer needed. Aziraphale lets him cling, offering no comment or judgment as Crowley lets himself fall apart for a moment.

Then, the moment is over. Crowley is adjusting his glasses, and the two stand up, Aziraphale pointedly studying the stone walls, even if he remains standing close enough for Crowley to feel the warmth radiating off him.

He shines the brightest Crowley has ever seen, almost burning away that lifeless form that Crowley had found not so very long ago out of his memory completely. They should talk about that at some point; humans having something like that could be very dangerous for both parties, and Crowley can't imagine losing his angel to it a second time.

Instead, Crowley looks over to where Aziraphale is looking. Under the glow of Aziraphale's celestial light, Crowley can see the images of hands painting against the stone. As he looks deeper into the darkness he can see horses and other animals running among the surface in both directions. Crowley follows the painted herds around the bend, wanting to see them under the sun, only to find that the entrance he's assumed lead to the sea instead sloped down into a calm still pool of seawater. He felt out, trying to figure out where he'd brought them, only to find the cave opening out into the sea some 175 meters away, well hidden under the Mediterranean surface, meaning whatever light had been tucked just out of his sight was most definitely not the sun.

Looking back to where Aziraphale was just out of sight, the light didn't look too far off from he was sure he'd seen before.

"They bring about such terrible things, "Aziraphale said, carefully not touching any of the fragile surfaces as he looked at the hands in awe, "And yet they reach such apex of creativity."

It would take humans several more centuries to find this place again, a feat worthy of the first humans to leave their story behind in the first place. Until then, Crowley and Aziraphale walked the dry parts of the cave in wonder, looking over a story nearly as old as them, drawn out by people neither had ever had the chance to meet.

**Author's Note:**

> The cave system Crowley sequestered them in is the [Cosquer Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosquer_Cave) in France. It would not be rediscovered by humans until 1985.
> 
> So, if there is a name for when sensory deprivation happens due to being trapped in a cave, i couldn't find the right name for it. Short of it is, between the absolute dark, the complete silence, and the wet chill, your brain starts making shit up, often both visual and audible hallucinations. how long it takes to start happening is debatable, but some people claim to begin to imagining things with in minutes. It happened to me once spelunking right after high school, in a controlled setting, and i will never go back underground again.
> 
> Crowley /may/ be suffering from sensory deprivation in parts of chapter . Or, he and Aziraphale might not have been alone in those caves. Perhaps its just ineffable. Your call.


End file.
